User input controlling sub-sub-components within a DC?

[danbig]

Hi -

Is it possible to set a user input box on a DC to control sub or sub-sub components within that DC?

I have to admit, I haven't searched extensively for a way to do this, but the answer isn't clear to me based on the little DC work I've done.

I've watched the "repeat" DC tutorial, where a fence is scaled at the sub-component (fence slat) is repeated.

I'd like to do something like that, but also control the rotating of the sub-component.

Imagine that I want to create a dynamic component, which has a fence rail, and fence slats. I want the fence slats to repeat on a set spacing, and I want the user to control the rotating of the fence slat about one of the fence rails.

Was I clear enough that someone could comment?

[Jim]

Dan,

It can be done, buy it is not as straight-forward as it could be.

One option is to assign the attribute directly to the nested component. The user would then need to open the top-level DC for editing until the target component is selected, and then open the DC Options dialog.

The other option is to assign an attribute to the top-level component, and pass the value down. The main constraint is that a component can only access direct parent and child attributes. So if you need to set an attribute in a grand-child component, you need to use a intermediate attribute in the child.

- TopLevel
  |
  + Child
    |
    + GrandChild

If you need an attribute "foo" in GrandChild, you start with a "foo" in the TopLevel:

TopLevel!foo:(get value from dialog.)

Pass it to the first Child"

Child!foo: =parent!foo (or =TopLevel!foo)

And finally down to the GrandChild:

GrandChild!foo: =parent!foo (or =Child!foo)

if that makes sense.

Note 1: The name of the attribute is not required to be the same - it just seems to make sense to use the same attribute name in all 3 levels.

Note 2: Not sure of the =parent!attribute form is documented anywhere, but using =parent can provide a small amount of abstract re-use for DC's.

[Howard leslie]

Dan,
See this, A question I've asked before:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=289&t=23202
........
It appears that you can't reference nested components directly (unfortunately)
.........
Hope this clears things up
Bye
Howard L'

[danbig]

Thanks, all. This is exactly what I needed.